in the morning?' she said, as she stood,
tall, and straight, and queen-like, before the four young men, who
glanced at each other with a significance in their looks, which she did
not understand.

It was Dick St. Claire who took it upon himself to explain.

'No, Hal is not coming,' he said, 'and he is awfully cut up about it. He
thought he might manage it until yesterday when he found it impossible
to do so. You see, he has taken a job which must be done at a certain
time.'

'Taken a job!' Jerrie repeated. 'What job? What do you mean?' and her
blue eyes flashed upon each of the young men, falling last upon Tom
Tracy, as if she expected him to answer, which he did in the half
sneering, half satirical tone which made her hate him and long to box
his ears.

'Why, it's a sort of carpenter's job,' he said; 'and I heard his hammer
going this morning before sunrise, for I was up early for once and out
in the park. Sounded as if he were shingling a roof, and that's work,
you know, which must be done in fair weather. It might rain and spoil
the plastering.'

'Thank you,' Jerrie answered, curtly. 'Harold is shingling a roof, and
cannot come. But where is Maude? Is she shingling a roof, too?'

'Yes, b-b-by Jove. You've h-hit it. Maude's sh-shingling a roof, too:
the b-best joke out,' Billy Peterkin chimed in, glad of an opportunity
to join in the conversation, and so get some attention from Jerrie.

He was a little man, only four feet five with heels, and he wore the
light clothes of which Maude had written, and a stove-pipe hat, and dove
colored gloves, and carried a little cane, which he constantly nibbled
at, when he was not beating his little boot with it. But he was
good-natured and inoffensive and kind-hearted, with nothing low or mean
in his nature; and Jerrie, who looked as if she could have picked him up
and thrown him over the house, liked him far better than she did the
'elegant Tom,' as she had nicknamed him, who stood six feet without
heels, and who knew exactly what shade of color to choose, from his
neck-tie to his hose, which were always silk of the finest quality. Tom
was faultlessly gotten up, and he knew it, and carried himself as if he
knew it, and knew, too, that he was Tom Tracy, the future heir of Tracy
Park, if he were fortunate enough to outlive both his uncle and his
father. Jerrie had disliked him when he was a boy and she disliked him
now, and turning her back upon him pretended to be intereste